BASIC DESCRIPTION: A short knight
sits on a dark horse, which is standing still. They overlook plowed
fields. The armored knight holds a pentacle in his extended right
palm. He and the horse have oak leaves decorating their heads.
FIRST THING THAT STRUCK ME: The horse's
oak leaves make it look like a reindeer.
COLORS: Sun yellow and earth brown;
grass green and underground black.
UPRIGHT MEANINGS AND
TRAITS: Work
and toil, a hard worker; training and education, developing
practical skill, attention to doing good work, zest for one's chosen
career path. Can be a workaholic; hard-working, industrious
and diligent, capable and dependable, reliable and
responsible, dedicated. Determined, dogged,
persevering, persistent, unwavering, patient, solid and
steady. Efficient, methodical, thorough,
meticulous, a finisher, a perfectionist. Conservative,
serious, prudent, cautious, slow and careful, pensive.
Realistic, practical, sensible,
faces facts, assesses circumstances candidly. Firm
convictions; ethical, sexually conservative, loyal, helpful, a true
friend, defensive and devoted. "A firm
sense of rightness can make him immovable....he will hold his
ground." (Huets) Physically fit, vigorous.
ALSO: Overseeing a project that is going
well. Help in property-ownership and financial matters. Financial
investment. "Harvest means toil as well as abundance." (Ziegler)
Utility, serviceableness, simplicity.
REVERSED MEANINGS AND TRAITS: A young
man of careless habit; careless or mediocre work; plodding
along; indolence, laziness, inertia, idleness,
stagnation, apathy. Narrow-minded, hard-headed,
obstinate, stubborn, unreasonable. Inflexible,
dogmatic, obsessive, opinionated, pedantic, picky, petty. Insistence
on the concrete, fear of risk, reluctance to try something new,
missing chances by waiting. Unadventurous, dull, boring,
stupid. Pessimistic, negative, gloomy, critical, snide, gossipy.
Possessive and exclusive. Unethical, lack of conviction in
important matters, weakness, discouragement, depression, "empty nest"
or "retirement" syndrome.
ALSO: Giving up too soon. Extravagant
(spending), ostentatious, greedy, merciless. "The vendetta may have
been invented by him; time is no barrier to the prince's revenge."
(Huets)
BIBLICAL: Exercise patience, therefore, brothers, until the presence of the Lord. Look! The farmer keeps waiting for the precious fruit of the earth, exercising patience over it until he gets the early rain and the late rain. You too exercise patience; make your hearts firm, because the presence of the Lord has drawn close. -- James 5:7-8
ANIMAL: Clydesdale--the work
horse.
PLANTS/TREES: Oak
LOCATION: My village of Seengen; southern Italy/Rome?
CRYSTALS: Onyx, hematite.
BOOK: Poor Richard's
Almanac
PUBLIC PEOPLE: Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis and Clark's Corps of
Discovery
Thomas Jefferson wrote of him that he was "brave, prudent, habituated
to the woods, and familiar with Indian manners and character. He is
not regularly educated but he possesses a great mass of accurate
observation on all the subjects of nature which present themselves
here.
"Of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness and perseverance of
purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert from its
direction, careful as a father of those committed to his charge, yet
steady in its maintenance of order and discipline, intimate with the
Indian character, customs and principles, habituated to the hunting
life, guarded by exact observation of the vegetables and animals of
his own country, against losing time in the description of objects
already possessed, honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound
understanding and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he
should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves, with all
these qualifications as if selected and implanted by nature in one
body for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in
confiding the enterprise to him."
OCCUPATIONS: farmer, overseer, foreman,
construction worker, producer, mineralogist, geologist (rocks for
jocks?), archeologist. "Economics, manufacture, treasurer,
guardian/warden, manual work." (Matthews) "Doctor, healer." (Ziegler)
PERSONAL THOUGHTS: A comparison of
cards from my decks shows him to generally be a sturdy, steady,
reliable, loyal kind of guy. Reminds me of a farmer, actually, or a
movie cop. Someone who does what's "right" because it's "right."
(Didn't I say that about the Knight of Swords?)
I was initially confounded trying to find his Fire until I read in
The Book of Thoth (Crowley):
"[T]heir fire is the smouldering fire of the process of growth." The
fire of earth -- the process of growth -- is slow and steady (like
the tortoise of "The Tortoise and the Hare" fame). It is working
continually, but the results cannot be seen at the end of the day.
Crowley ties this card to agriculture and nutrition. "Milk --
it does a body good." Makes one grow solid and sturdy.
Knight of Pents has the patience and efficiency to draw the Fire from
the Earth, in such pursuits as farming, mineralogy, geology (rocks
for jocks?), and perhaps archeology. I could even picture him as an
Egyptian overseer, building temples and cities out of mud and
straw. This "earthy" personality has a strong bond with the
land. Jean Huets says: "Taurus does not delight in belligerence, but
he will fight to preserve the religion, homeland, and customs of his
clan. A firm sense of rightness can make him immovable." This is
where the farmers and movie cops come in. He has deep-rooted loyalty
and faithfulness to family and nation. He works and feeds and
defends, 'cause it's the right thing to do. Salt of the earth. "Good
people."
His "deliberateness" may make him seem slow, dull or unemotional. He
avoids scandal -- not because he's worried what others will say --
but because he's just not interested. Crowley says: "He is somewhat
insensitive, and may appear dull, but he is not; it so appears
because he makes no effort to understand ideas which are beyond his
scope. He may often appear stupid, and is inclined to be resentful of
more spiritual types."
But like the Wheel of the Year, and the cycle of growth . . . " every
Disk is a living and revolving symbol."
THIS CARD/PERSON IN MY LIFE: Beat
Hufschmid
QUOTES FROM OTHER SOURCES: Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little. -- Plutarch
OTHER DECKS: Crowley's Thoth and Wang's Golden Dawn: I
use the Knight/King from these decks, rather than the Prince, for
comparison, because he is the "Fire of Earth." One is represented by
Capricorn, the other by Taurus, but these are both cloven-hoofed
animals -- as is the King Stag, which is featured on these cards.
Marion Z. Bradley's "Mists of Avalon" gives a great description on
the ritual and meaning of the "Young Buck" defeating, and therefore
becoming, the "King Stag."
Grains are heavily featured in the Pents courts. Interesting also,
because grains and grasses are what cloven-hoofeds eat.
Waite's Knight is mounted upon a
black workhorse, who has all four feet on the ground. (None of his
other Knights' horses do.) For me, the character of Waite's Knights
are represented more by the horses than anything.
Healing Tarot's Son of Pentacles
stands between two corn fields, and the keyword on this card is
"Efficiency." He's definitely a worker. Cosmic Tarot shows another aspect in the
Prince of Pentacles. He appears (and is described as being) in a
military camp. He looks like a young Charles Bronson.
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This page is excerpted from my original contributions to an online
Tarot court card discussion on a list which no longer exists.
http://www.moonchild.ch/Tarot/court/PKn/PKnIMHO.html
